For Inspiration and Recognition of....FIRST.

I am back, and beginning to recover. The last few days have really beat me up, last night I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. It's been good though.

Friday we drove 3.5 hours northeast to The Dalles, little town that defies all attempts to be classified as an Oregon town...actually that whole area does. The Gorge, as it's known. The Columbia River runs through the Gorge, and the wind never stops. Ever.....hehe.

Anyways we got up there around 8:30 that night and established base at Wahtonka High School, wherre next day's goings-on would be held. They put us up in their gym. First though we unloaded the field construction stuff from a trailer that one of the teams [the Scalliwags, Team 1359] had packed up from the Valley. Constructing a robotics playing field is heavy work. There's a heavy roll of carpet around 40 feet long, and numerous bits of plywood, and big ramps and other field elements which require five or six muscular guys to move at all. Well anyway we unloaded the trailed and dumped everything in the lower gym, and unloaded our robots as well [ours can be carried without too much trouble by two gals, the only students from our team who were present].
Lights out [or lack thereof] came around 11. The gals [all 10 of us] were kipped down in the upper gym, while the lads inhabited the Lair known as the weight room. hehe.
I had of course opted for being 'tough' and not bringing a mattress-pad [little roll-up thin thing that tries to keep the floor from being so hard].  This did not go well. We had, in this order: Bethany, sleeping bag, and wood floor. With a pillow near the top end of Bethany. And trenchcoat over top, to keep out the lights which were most definitely not 'out'.

I did not sleep well. Woke at intervals....probably at least 6 times before the 6:15 AM rise-and-fail-to-shine. Next order of business was assembling the field...and getting our robot to work. Trouble with the router and frequency of the signal. A bit scary for me, because I realized that NEXT year I am going to have to learn all that stuff. What with the graduating-genius problem and all.

The competition went well. There were various other technology and engineering events set up at the school too. Turn-out from the public was not astounding, but there were a lot of kids that got a chance to drive-a-robot in the afternoon...it was splendid to see these students being pulled into FIRST at a young age. I was filming the whole time, from the upper level. Zoomed way down, occasionally, during a match....when our team had a guest driver....some hapless youngster from the audience, who is smiling as he pilots a 120 lb. robot....never knowing what he has gotten himself into. In three years he will be on a FRC team, spending late nights at the lab, or loaning out his closet so the team actually has a space to work on the robot in, or staying up all night writing essays.  

  And as I watched, I grinned...the smile that a few of my compatriots know and fear...known as 'Uh oh. Bethany has her evil face on.'  Another generation of young people hooked on the most world-changing drug on the market, FIRST Robotics.
   Fifteen years down the road, someone will explore deep space or get a little closer to a cure for cancer, and they will make a grant to FIRST, because [as they will tell my news organization in a closely-followed press conference], a program that Dean Kamen started in the wilds of New Hampshire inspired them. Gave them the tools and the motivation they needed. Do the math, change the world.



Wellwell. After that bit of inspiration....tear-down of the field after competition went well. Pretty fast. I left the camera on tripod and got some amusing footage of about ten people, including myself, rolling up the carpet. Good times. Then about a dozen people hefted the carpet and moved it out to the trailer. Lots of plywood moving and so on. I am tough enough to get injured and not mention it at the time, but proud enough of my toughness to swagger around LATER with pride. I didn't know the edges of plywood could cut up your wrists that bad...anyways. Drove back home and slept a lot of the way. By the time I was home [round 8:30] yesterday evening, I was sore all over. From yoga on Thursday...sleeping on the floor on Friday...and transporting/being bruised by heaving bits of equipment. Got into the shower....then bed....SNOZZZ. I was in bed by 10 and did not wake again until morning, nor did I get up until almost noon. It was epic.

Hm what else. Several of the many high schools in the area had prom last night and there are pics all over my friends' Facebook pages. I had a small epiphany: I didn't want to go. Sure, the gals are gorgeous in their dresses, sure their boyfriends look nice, sure they all had a great time....but I wouldn't have. You may make discreet mention of sour grapes but that is not entirely it, maybe I might have wanted to go, but just now I realized I didn't want to. I hate getting dressed up and worrying about making my hair look different than it usually does. And I do not enjoy standing around trying to make conversation or else risk looking like a snob. Because let's face it, I do look good, I do have poise, I do talk like a Harvard English professor [I think]. When I'm not comfortable, BAM [or BAND? but there's nobody here, now, who knows about that...] I turn silent. And BAM people are scared of me. That's not the way I want it to be. I should work on changing that. It is not being helped by angsty blog posts.

   But anyway, I am happier having my wrists cut up by plywood, and trying to show myself that I'm as strong as any guy [doesn't work], and racing around with a video camera, and hauling heavy items in company with an army of sweaty geeks. Happier there than I would be anywhere I had to worry about looking nice and showering and doing my hair and so on. Never thought I would be a tomboy. I still don't think I am, I just like to pretend to be tougher-than-thou.

Now I turn on my LaCie external hard drive, feel its rough-polished aluminum whir to life. It's going to be a long day on the editing floor.

Late nights and good times

Well we been having epic times......gots to post this right now, before I hit the hay (yes at 6 PM). 


Sunday I started writing out this post:

heHEEEEE I just got back from hanging out with my dear friend Eva. We had planned to get together sometime soon, and have a few Red Bulls to help get the good times rollin'.

Went over to her place about 4 this afternoon.

We wound up going to the university library in search of stuff she needed for her college class, thinking it would be a breeze to find. Medical journals, relating to physical therapy. We spent a solid 2 hours there. It was very frustrating, dealing with unhelpful librarians, and the fact that she didn't have an account there so we had to buy a card to make photo copies, and then I was hacking into the library computers to google stuff to see if we could find it online easier. Well not hacking EXACTLY.....well, ANYWAYS. Went up and downstairs there, FINALLY found the stuff and had tech problems trying to photocopy the pages.

Great fun, I have had enough experience doing that sort of thing on my own that it is nice to be doing it with somebody ELSE for a change, hehe.

THEN we stopped at Dari-mart on the way home and asked for the most caffeinated drink they had. The manager didn't know, so we went for the classic: a Red Bull and some sort of Monster, Assault I believe it was called.

Had dinner (toothsome) at her place, always exciting with a big family. Cleaned up the kitchen, I was getting worried because I'd have to go home soon, even though I had managed to get an extension from parents. About halfway through the dishwashing I suggested that we open The Goods. HEHEHE.

After cleaning the kitchen we holed up in her room with the remainder of The Goods. We were both twitching a bit, hehehe. Tried to play a game but got sidetracked to talking about random stuff. Things are vague, through a haze of caffeine, but I recall a lot of hilarity over Eva's mispronunciation of 'smog' as 'smug'. 

Then we had a lengthy and impassioned discussion over the horrors and sadnesses of feedlot animal production, don't ask me why, hehe. 'Well....enough of this topic!'   Got up-to-date on our various endeavors. 

Pretty soon Eva started reminiscing about the good times our homeschool co-op group had when we were all about 10. 'Remember one time we came up here and had a fainting contest?' [Faked fainting, I must hasten to add: we are all theatre geeks.]  Sez Eva, isn't it a pity that we're 18 (or nearly that) now and too old for such things....I LOOKS AT HER WITH A CRAZY LOOK IN ME EYES. Yes, we both fainted dead away. 

Then [has anybody seen Ice Age 1?] we somehow found that we both thought the bit hilarious, where Sid is trying to get to sleep and is turning round and round in place and 'HUYYY!' as he stretches, 'HYUKK!', and then round-and-round....well, hehe, you have to save seen it. Had a good time demonstrating that, hehe. Two almost-grown-ups, giggling hysterically and [on my part] making the classic Insane-Bethie face. 

I had to leave shortly alas, as most of the time had been taken up with library endeavors. Got home around 9, still wildly caffeinated. Proceeded to scare one or two friends via chat >:)  

Tuesday I had a chapter test in math, which went pretty well. Our teacher does give evil tests....

Yesterday [Wednesday] things really heated up. I was told that the laptop I borrowed to edit on was needed by the studio on Friday. I also had to study for the College Algebra midterm exam today, and read my week's worth of biology homework for today's bio class. And the robotics team is having an end-of-season party Saturday and wants some footage. 

I was out of the house til afternoon more or less, what with group-study at school, and farmers' market. By late afternoon I could tell it was going to be a long hard night. SOMETHING was going to be happening at a LATE HOUR, but it was a toss-up as to which thing. Studied, showered, ate, transferred music til 10 PM.  Then I finally settled down to editing the four-odd hours of footage from Atlanta. 

Keep in mind that this jollity came hard on the heels of several nights of poor sleep, and STILL not being caught up from Atlanta. It's getting rather serious, only the other day I was randomly pounced on by a friend, via chat, and told to get some sleep [this was around 8:30 PM]. 

Yes. ANYWAYS. Worked away at the editing, with a few distractions til 1:45 AM, what time I was told by my mom to go to bed, which I did very willingly, hehe. 

I ALSO set my alarm for 4:10 AM. 

........

And did not get to sleep for a bit. I believe 2 hours was the grand total...got up, made coffee, ate breakfast, and back to the editing. Fortunately it was only a rough cut. Coffee fumes swirled in my brain.

Around 6 AM I got worried that I wouldn't be able to get it done in time to be able to render while I was at school [I KNEW there would be a problem with the rendering]. I stopped worrying about editing much, and just cleaned up the gaps and adjusted audio levels. 

THEN I ran into a problem, all right: I had no idea how to export the file. One would think it would be straightforward enough, but when I tried 'export as Quicktime' it merely exported ONE file.   >.<  

Tried exporting entire sequence, and popped off an email to the equipment check-out manager and all-round techie. 

AT 8:45 AM, I HIT RENDER AND RACED OUT THE DOOR. Providential timing. 

Off to the math exam. I BEASTED IT. I TOOK IT DOWN. I DESTROYED IT UTTERLY. 

Not very hard at all, compared to the tests OUR teacher writes. I think I mebbe missed one or two points on on problem....it was 'name three truths expressed by the fact that x = 4 is a zero of P(x)"....I fudged a bit on one  :P

After that, I attempted to catch forty-winks on a bench by the school library [head pillowed on Bag of Holding] failed, because I am always nervous that I am going to be pounced on.....

Then out to spend the interim before biology at a friend's house. Biology was good, very low-key, I was let lie on a couch in the living room and DID catch forty winks, gotta love homeschoolers who allow you to take responsibility for your own actions. 

Then home, where I found email from forementioned techie with instructions on how to burn to DVD. Just drag the Quicktime file [which had successfully rendered] into a little program called Toast. Sweet thang....I really need to look into buying it for Eddie [MacBook Pro]. 

It's taking a while to prepare the file, but so far this has been the smoothest render-and-burn process I've EVER gone through, and I've used quite a few editing platforms. 

Also downloaded Bean, a nice little text-editing app for Mac OS X. A definite cut above your basic TextEdit, but lean, doesn't take so long to power up as, say, OpenOffice [which, by the way, I use for everything on Eddie. Nice open-source software, but bulky].  

If all goes well, I plan to be in bed by 7 PM tonight....let's see if we can do that..... hehehe! :)

Hope you enjoyed reading about my recent exploits...as much as I enjoyed having them :D

Performance Week!

Wellwellwell it's been a while!  

I'm not dead yet.... :D

College Algebra/trig has been going well....so far it's just been 'review'  :P   But it's a good class...very small actually. The teacher is INSANE but very awesome :) and I've got a whole page of quotes from algebra...some from students but mostly Ms. Kimes  :)  It tells you something that she's got a little note on her filing cabinet: 'C___ High School,  ___ Kimes   Evil Cackle'   :D

Rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet are also going...well...ish. INTENSE.  Things got fast and furious about Tuesday of last week, with long rehearsals and lack of sleep.   Wednesday night I came home from a late rehearsal, did math, and around 10 PM I came to the realization that 'Oh crud we really should have competed for the Woodie Flowers award.'  (Robotics stuff: in honor of one of FIRST's founders, Woodie Flowers, it celebrates the mentor [robotics coach-type] who best embodies the spirit of FIRST.)  Well as usual our whole team was too busy building the robot to write an essay, and nobody actually thought of it except ME the DAY BEFORE the essay was due.   And of course I was finishing up Chairman's Award essay and stuff. 

One of our mentors has worked harder than anyone for the past 8 years or so, the team wouldn't exist without him.   Nobody from our team has ever been nominated for WF. I decided that if he can give hours of time, work practically a second job (that's what robotics is :P ) I can stay up and write an essay....

Thankfully there was a word limit, so it only took me about two hours. Writing an essay at midnight is a really exhilarating experience, as was getting up for school next day, Thursday. Rehearsal as usual.

There was a happy moment when I was curled up on the floor backstage trying to catch 40 winks when somebody shouted onstage, and I panicked, thinking it might be me needed, and sat up and banged my head on this pile of heavy metal thingees. Promptly cracked up. Later I managed to stand up directly under another hard boxy thing....fun times :)

 Friday our rehearsal started as usual at 3:30 in the afternoon. Cue-to-cue: the tech people are working on lighting. Actors say a line, stop. Wait. Wait some more. Skip to the end of the scene and wait some more.  Took hours to get through the first act. We were there til 11 Pm.   

It was also the first time run crew (shlepping sets and props and furniture) was actually working with servants (moving more shtuffs for scenes). 

As a Capulet servant, I (with 4-ish other servants) move these four potted trees on and offstage a LOT. Like after every third scene. We only started doing this in the past few days. Oh, and we're still acting in a couple scenes.  

Those confounded trees haunt my every waking thought. Before Friday's rehearsal I had been on top of things, and printed out a list of every scene and what had to be moved on stage. (We are now on the third revision of this important list.)

Run crew and fellow servants love me. There are a total of three people on run crew which is NOT enough. It got really exciting when the four trees blossomed to six, spread amongst us four servants (has to be servants because it's in the scene). 

And there's this miserable bench that I and another girl have to get on and offstage. There was one time when she wasn't there and I raced out onstage to grab it, to cheers from the techies in the audience....a great moment :) 

There was an issue getting home, so I got to hang round the theatre later than almost anybody else. My dad was working late on the robot and did not get home til 1:30 that morning. 

I dreamed all night about rehearsal, and those bloody trees! XD

Saturday proved even more interesting, with a second revision of the master-list, which has made run crew adore me :P   

 This time it was my turn to miss my cue with that blasted bench. Twice. The first time because I thought I had more time than I did, and was marshalling the troops for the next tree-moving bit. ARGH. Then I was all primed to make sure I didn't miss the next bench-scene, and took a SECOND to try and find tree-people, and BAM missed the entrance. Apologies all round, franticness. 

After about 1 pm I rushed cross-town to robotics scrimmage; big pre-competition thingee before the robot is boxed up Tuesday night. We did pretty well, except for a tip-over which resulted in something coming loose, and also the treads came off one wheel....thank goodness for epoxy! 

Stayed there til 7 when my mom came and rescued me from the deadly-dullness of standing-around-not-being-able-to-help-much (as was most of the team, it was just programming issues at that point.) 

My dad was really suffering, he couldn't help much either and was holed up trying not to fall asleep....commented that it was almost like being stuck in an airport at 1 AM.   He got home pretty early thankfully: 9:30. 

I went to bed at 8:30 and got about 12 hours of sleep...off to rehearsal at 1 this afternoon to find it had been cancelled :( I was really wanting to run through again with crew, those trees....Director was beyond enthused about my scene list and general preparedness, commented on my responsible-ness =D  which made me happy. 

Happy Advent!

Hoo boy. Long post coming up.

First off: I did not win NaNo. :( 42,618 was the final count.

*A big than you to everybody who commented and supported the frenzied author during the time of need, you're the best!! :) *


The weekend was ghastly. I went for 46 hours without sleep.

My second all-nighter on Sunday night did not go well. I decided to hole up in the pantry because my room doesn't really have a door and my parents would probably have heard the tapping at the keyboard.

The parents did not go to bed til kind of late so I sat up in my room writing notes on paper. Then I snuck downstairs with the utmost furtiveness and ensconced myself in the pantry.
I soon learned that it is very very hard to use a laptop without any other light in the room. I ventured forth in search of a lamp; failed to find one (this was about 1 AM). FInally I absconded with an electric candle-thing which worked passably. I also learned that it is almost impossible to read pencil by the light of the little flashlight I had taped to a baseball cap, miner-like.

Went out to get carrots, cheese and bread, and of course more coffee. I have come to simply loathe coffee, chiefly after the first all-nighter.

I kept banging away at the keyboard, engaged in a lot of sprints and word-wars on the NaNo forums where a small group of nocturnal peeps attempted to up the lagging word-count.

As I gulped down more coffee I had an occasional qualm about how much caffeine one can ingest before effects set in.... o_0

Around 4 AM I was dead, absolutely dead. I think I may have been falling asleep for nanoseconds between words. I believe I was beginning to hallucinate slightly. I left the pantry to go to the bathroom or maybe get some more coffee, I forget which. In the hallway I encountered my mom. She did not see me at first (I was so disoriented that I had turned into the wall believing that the hallway ran the other direction). She did however see the light coming from the pantry which I had failed to turn off. FInally saw me and made me go back to bed.

I got four hours of sleep and faced the next day with renewed energy (sort of). Went through school in a daze. Wrote crazily all Monday.
Around 3:30 that afternoon I had a rather brilliant idea to have another character come into the story. This did not boost the word count as much as could have been hoped however.

I degenerated into having one of my characters reminisce over how she did NaNo one time...got about ten pages out of that...every fifth word might have been spelled right.
Parents made me go to bed at 9:30 or so; truth be told, I was not unwilling, I was exhausted.

The story is maybe 75% complete at this point. I'm fairly happy with it, there were some rather nice scenes and quite a lot of side-splitting humor. I'm fairly attached to my characters. Won't have much time to work on it though :(


Other stuff: Yes, happy Advent! Can't believe it's so close to Christmas! The excitement is filtering through from Kendra, I think :P

Theatre news: I'm likely going to audition for Romeo and Juliet at CHS!!! I'm really excited. Auditions are December 14 and 15, the show is at the end of February. I'd love to have an acting part but I don't know if I can fit it i, I'd really like to do robotics at my dad's school and it's during the same time-window. Might be able to do tech or costuming or something though. I have to memorize some Shakespeare for the audition.

Weather: is awesome. COLD and sunny. It started to frost almost as soon as the sun went down yesterday, and there are rumors of impending snow at the end of the week! I love this weather, I ought to move to Montana or something :)

Hay bales: I had to move a 60-pounder today, and I had the brilliant idea of backing up to the trunk of the car (where it was) and rolling the bale onto my back, holding it by the strings.

Yahoo: I got yahoo IM, me address is bethie_forty_two :)

2012: Shardhana left a comment inquiring my views on 2012....a very thought-provoking subject, hehe. Let's just say I am attending "2013" ;) I don't believe it will be the end of the world, BUT I think there could certainly be unknown repercussions, for one thing I've heard about solar flares picking up then, who knows. I don't know if that could result in some form of EMP which might knock out power/communications, in which case we would be in rather epic trouble.
I'm not worrying about it too much. Would love to see the movie, though! :)

no sleep

Pulled an all-nighter. Was going to go to bed at midnight (did, in fact) but then realized that I was going to be awake for a while anyways, weighed a few more considerations and went for it with a mug of coffee and Eddie.

I was forced to write in the spare bedroom above the kitchen, and in utmost secrecy, lest I fall afoul of a parent, who would doubtless insist on bed.

Got pretty chilly around 5:30. Very foggy, frosty. Not one wink of sleep did I get, but my word count is up to 24,046.

Actually am not suffering much: was able to stay awake in church. However things are striking me as way too funny and I look ghastly.

Please say hi, somebody!!